Stamford's Harmful Language

Stamford’s Attempted Elimination of “Harmful” Language Initiative
Or
Liberal Newspeak For A Degenerate Era

Stanford University’s IT department in collusion with the local activist group, People of Color in Technology (POC-IT) have created and published a list of terms and phrases that they’ve deemed offensive accompanied by alternative recommendations to be now used in all Stamford University IT publication and discourses. It’s part of the university’s new Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI), a multi-phase, multi-year project to reshape language and idiom in IT at Stanford in order to meet new #Wokespeak standards.

I’ve included the actual document in this post because people “picked on” Stamford so much that they no longer make it publicly available for download and perusal.

The list itself is divided into 10 sections: ableist, ageism, colonialism, culturally appropriative, gender-based, imprecise language, institutionalized racism, person-first, violent, and additional considerations. Each one seems to go farther afield and farther down the rabbit hole of #Woke insanity.

But, I’ll let the folks at Stamford’s own student newspaper, The Stamford Review provide a better preface to this:

Stanfordā€™s IT department recently launched its Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative, created by the Stanford CIO Council (CIOC) and People of Color in Technology (POC-IT). Stanford IT took a stab at putting together a master list of ā€˜harmful termsā€™ and suggested alternative phrases to use instead. Ironically, according to the guide, POC-IT should change its name, as people of color (used generically) is ā€œimprecise language.ā€ We at the Review are ballsy, therefore weā€™ve committed numerous violations of the ā€˜harmful language standardā€™ throughout the text ā€” they are all bolded to show that we know the new rules, but choose to ignore them.

“Big Brother is Watching You:
Stanfordā€™s New ā€˜Harmful Languageā€™ Guide”

Really, go read the article in its entirety! It’s a no holds barred, snarkilicious send-up of this idiocy and self-unaware insanity promulgated and seen to be enforced by the university’s administration. The ladies and gentlemen of the Review have done a laudable job of lampooning this attempt at newspeak.

But, While Laughable, This Is Well-Crafted Thought Policing

Humor is a fine weapon, if not the most effective on, against misused authority. But, even while laughing at the fools, one must respect their capacity to commit great harm. That’s important in cases like thought policing and speech control, especially when the guidelines thereof are, as in Stamford’s case, well-crafted from an indoctrination and social engineer standpoint.

It’s important to note that 10 sections: ableist, ageism, colonialism, culturally appropriative, gender-based, imprecise language, institutionalized racism, person-first, violent, and additional considerations – mixes terms that have long fallen out of the vernacular, e.g., spaz, retard, and Pocahontas, with the more egregious attempts to craft newspeak. Additionally, it category seems to go further and for more “esoteric” reasons in restricting and rewiring speech.

That’s actually how you achieve this sort of thing. You mix the either no longer popular or accepted already as offensive phrases in with, preferably near the beginning, with the more radical ideas. It builds acceptance in the subject’s mind by linking a certain level of equivalency between points. And then, you incrementally accelerate the process, as POC-IT has done in this document section by section, each building upon the ones before.

And some of their choices and rationale thereof are stupid and show an intrinsic bias based upon their preferred “demographics.”

Black Hat, White Hat, Grey Hat

Assigns negative connotations to the color black, racializing the term; Assigns value connotations based on color (white = good), an act which is subconsciously racialized; This term combines black hat and white hat, which both hold racial connotations.

~*~

Yeah, they just went with the colors involved – because Blacks are their preferred people and Whites are their preferred “oppressors.” Simple, easy, of far-reaching consequenceā€¦ and ignorant and arguable racist. šŸ˜†

I mean, they could have gone with the the fact that Black Hat and White Hat both have their roots in the older American Westerns – movies which arguably romanticized our conquest of the West and eradication of the majority of the Amerindian Tribes. But they went with Black and White instead, which shows a specific bias and racial preference.

So too does those “esoteric” reasons as to why a world or phrase – e.g., rule of thumb – is to be deemed offensive and prohibited from use. It plays on the subject’s ignorance with the goal of them “realizing” that the word or phrase had at some point a dark history that the subject never knew about. This removes guilt from them for previous uses but instills guilt for future use and, given people egos, makes them more likely to call out others as much to show their knowledge of that bit of history as anything else.

But, since I brought it up, here’s a good example:

Rule Of Thumb

Although no written record exists today, this phrase is attributed to an old British law that allowed men to beat their wives with sticks no wider than their thumb.

~*~

Actually, this phrase originated during the Medieval period’s explosion of construction of cathedrals and castles. All measurements were predicated directly or indirectly upon the length of one person on the site’s thumb. It later became part of normal vernacular because millers tested the fineness and consistency of the flour the ground by rubbing it between their fingers and thumb.

So, not only is their rationale undocumented, as they admit, if it was used as measure in men beating their wives, this is a later use of a long established measurement.

But, if you “inform” people that it is associated with state sanction wife beating, some of them will go, “Oh fuck! I never knew that,” stop using the phrase, and cheerfully show off their “knowledge” by castigating others for using it in their presence, thereby extending the reach of the indoctrination.

So, while extremely laughable and even more extremely worthy of being pilloried, Stamford’s Harmful Speech regulations are, in fact, dangerous and Americans need to keep that firmly in mind.

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Invisible College Barrier?

Invisible College Barrier? No!
Invisible College Barrier? No!

Certain sorts are complaining that underrepresented minority (URM) – yes, that’s now a term in college circles – students are facing invisible barriers in public colleges which prevent them from getting or completing the degrees that they want. And those invisible barriers are grades. And this, of course, is racist and needs to be addressed.

Let’s start with the fact that minorities are most likely not underrepresented, if enrollment figures have maintained the rates that they had for a long time. A five-year average showed that 4.98% of Whites, 6.22% of Blacks, and 4.1% of Latinos enrolled in college each year. So, that pretty much throws the Underrepresented Minority (URM) into the trash heap where all such lies belong.

But that “invisible barrier” to minority students is hardly invisible at all. It’s in plain sight, like all or most actual scholastic requirements in colleges, especially large public universities. They do gate off popular majors, limiting them out of necessity to those students with the best GPAs in prerequisite courses for those respective majors. These grade requirements conserve the various departments’ limited resources by acting as a winnowing tool, which makes sure that the strongest students enter those majors and lower-performing students are directed to other majors that the universities’ faculties believe they can better handle.

ā€œI got in here,ā€ she [Gonzales] told me this summer, which she spent finishing her degree in a different major. ā€œI did the application. I did the essays. I was accepted. But then there was another admissions process I didnā€™t even know about. It was like running a race with one leg.ā€

It’s quite simple really. When competing for resources, those who can show that they will make the best use of those resources will gain them and those that don’t show that won’t get them. If minorities can’t successfully compete – a falsehood, judging by UC Berkely’s graduates demographic figures – it’s neither the universities faults nor their “problem” to solve.

Most certainly, the growing trend of using “holistic” means of judging a major candidates’ worthiness to claim one of the seats in a college/major, is not a means that provides true benefit. It just ends up lowering the bar, but only for certain classes of applicant.

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College Economics 1001

College Economics 1001
College Economics 1001

This about sums up the rank and malodorous hypocrisy of Freshman Economics as it is now taught in the reeking cesspits of Leftism that are the vast majority of what are called colleges and universities in America.

Then, this is what had to happen since we allowed these institutions to degenerate to the point that they effectively and tacitly, though rarely overtly, run all professorial candidates and all course syllabi through their departments of Intersectionality, Gender, and Racial Justice for preapproval.

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The Indoctrination Gap

The Indoctrination Gap
The Indoctrination Gap

Periodically – normally either while they’re losing an election or immediately after having lost one – our domestic enemies will bemoan the “education gap” between them and Americans, who vote for Republicans. The rest of the time they tend to be patronizing and sarcastic about it and those “ignorant bumpkins” in rural America.

Yet, what is truer is that there is a widening Indoctrination Gap between the Leftists and the American people. A couple of generations of ever-increasing left-wing indoctrination being added to- or disguised as “higher education” has both guaranteed that college graduates would at least lean Left and that Americans would more and more reject the institutions that did this and which continue to escalate their doing of it.

And, to cement things and increase both the divide and the Leftists’ indoctrination of the college educated, the graduates’ incurred debt, declining ROI on their education, and the need or implanted desire to move to higher cost of living urban centers, all conspire to both separate the two groups further and to make Americans think poorly of college as path to take in life.

But hey! What do I know? I’m just a deplorable, knuckle-dragging ignoramus…

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Outrageous Costumes

Well, America is coming up on Halloween again. Hence, it’s the season where we’re inundated by ranting and whining complaints from snowflakes, SJWs, minority grifters, and the White, Liberal enablers of the former three about outrageous and/or inappropriate Halloween costumes.

Outrageous Costumes

Yep! Every one of the twelve costumes depicted above would be declared offensive and inappropriate by America’s domestic enemies. They’d each be considered: Cultural Appropriation, Offensive Cultural Reduction, Anti-Women, and or too likely to offend some portion of the residents inside America’s borders.

Personally, I say where whatever you want to wear. Enjoy what you can of what others are wearing. And, if push comes to shove, teach the snowflakes and their fellow travelers the old, real meaning of Halloween if they dare to complain. šŸ˜‰

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